Friday, June 25, 2010

Step by step, US politicians on all sides become an oiligarchy that sees moving off petrol as irrational: turning off the spigot would turn off their election funds

By Johann HariThe Independent

".....A clue to the biggest cause lies in the current Gulf disaster. The oil companies gave so many "gifts" to the safety inspectorsthat, by this year, they were often just handed the inspection forms and told to fill them in themselves. On the national stage in the US, politicians on all sides (including Barack Obama) are sprayed with petro-money at election time. Step by step, they become an oiligarchythat sees moving beyond petrol as irrational: turning off the spigot would turn off their election funds. A more subtle but just as certain process happens here in Europe. Politics becomes a broken pipeline, in which the public interest leaks away.

And so we are all left slithering in the global oil slick. Yet the anger of the sane citizenry – those of us who don't want to engage in collective self-destruction – has been weirdly muted. Most of us know that we can't carry on like this, but it is still much more common to see protests for cheap oil than to see protests to build a world beyond it. The Climate Camp protests in London this week were a rare and inspiring exception: they need reinforcements, fast.

The oilman John Paul Getty once quipped: "The meek will inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights." If the sane majority who know we need to transcend oil remain so meek, we may not inherit much worth having at all."